Money Keeps Shas in Israeli Coalition / Brinkmanship by ultra-Orthodox party gains $12.2 million for its schools

New York Times

Published
4:00 am PST, Wednesday, December 29, 1999

1999-12-29 04:00:00 PDT Jerusalem -- Resolving a potentially destabilizing political crisis, Prime Minister Ehud Barak yesterday persuaded the third-largest party in Israel's parliament to remain in his coalition by offering $12.2 million and debt relief for its state-subsidized religious schools.

Shas, an ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party, dropped its plan to withdraw from Barak's broad-based government when its brinkmanship worked.

After nearly six months of rocky relations with Barak, who insisted that he would not be "extorted," the religious party won much of the money it was seeking just as its Cabinet ministers prepared to tender their resignations.

Emerging from the Finance Ministry as the evening news began, Eli Yishai, Shas' young leader, said calmly that an agreement had been reached. Shas will vote for Barak's fiscally conservative budget, Yishai said after legislative deliberations began last night.

With the agreement, Barak has escaped an 11th-hour crisis as his budget goes to the parliament and he prepares to fly to the United States early next month for the second round of talks with the Syrians. Shas' support of the peace effort is vital to Barak's plans.

Gadi Baltiansky, a Barak spokesman, insisted that the prime minister had not "capitulated," and he described the horse-trading as business as usual when Israel's fractious, sectarian parliament revs up for a budget vote.

A political novice, Barak, a former general, had tuned out advisers who counseled him to settle accounts with Shas early in the fall. He tried to wait out Shas' political leaders, novices themselves, saying he would not "be budged."

But Shas never gave up. And in the end, the party appears to be getting much of what it was requesting for its schools and the three ministries it controls.

Shas' troubled school system will receive $12.2 million to cover most of its $20 million in debts. For next year's operating costs, it will also get $6.5 million more than budgeted for its 14,000 pupils.

In exchange, Shas agreed to accept heightened state supervision of its schools, allowing the Education Ministry to oversee its secular curriculum and monitor the teaching credentials of its staff. Shas, which was persuaded to dismiss its superintendent earlier this year, also agreed to close 40 schools that are severely under-enrolled.

Like the other ultra-Orthodox systems in Israel, the Shas system, which is 10 years old, has operated autonomously.